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Charles de Foucauld, Silent witness for Jesus, 'in the face of Islam'

Charles, then, came to Beni Abbes, an Algerian oasis just
south of the Atlas mountains and close to the frontier with Morocco.
There were gardens, worked by slaves from central Africa, local nomads
with property in the oasis and many visiting nomads from further
afield, travelling merchants both Muslim and Jewish, and a French
military force representing the occupying power. The French soldiers
built a small 'hermitage' for Charles (rebuilt, it is still there),
near, but deliberately separate from, the main settlement. It was poor
and rough, built of mud bricks and palm branches, with a chapel, a
small courtyard and six tiny cells.

Did Charles intend to found a poor but basically traditional
Christian monastery, a 'Trappe' in miniature, as some have said? True,
there are elements of this; but - as Charles makes clear - the basic
inspiration was Islamic! As Charles told his friend, Henry de Castries,
it was intended to be a 'a zaouia of prayer and hospitality'.20 Charles
had been received in such Muslim zaouias while exploring Morocco,
especially by a certain Sidi ben Edris, the grandson of the local
'marabout', Sidi ben Daoud, to whom he had revealed, at the risk of his
life, his 'Christian' and 'French' identity, a confidence reciprocated
by the handing over to Charles of a secret letter to the 'Ambassador of
the French Government'.

A zaouia was a Muslim confraternity for ritual worship and
hospitality, often at the centre of the religious and socio-political
life of the area.21 Drawing on this Moroccan experience, Charles, now
again in an Islamic context with the same cultural background, chose to
found a similar zaouia:

'a zaouia of prayer and hospitality, from which
will radiate such a "piety" as to spread light and warmth to all the
country around'.

The finality and the form are clearly the same. But
there is an essential difference. For inside the chapel, above the
tabernacle with the sacramental 'presence', is a life-size outline
drawing of Jesus with outstretched arms and a symbolic heart, done by
Charles himself. The living Jesus, hidden in the tabernacle but
forcefully expressed to the view of all in the painted drawing, is put
at the 'centre' of this 'Christian' zaouia. And the love that Jesus
lived is to be the living motivation of its members' relationships with
all who come. Charles' dress and title express this same intention. He
wears the Muslim gandourah, but with a red heart-and-cross roughly
stitched on it. And he was called, with his approval, the 'Christian
marabout', marabout 22 being the normal title of the head of a zaouia.